Witchita 9 October РWatermark Books & Caf̩ is pleased to welcome Paul French for a reading and book signing of Midnight in Peking

A plug for an event of my own this Wednesday in Witchita….

More detials of the event and Watermark Books here

Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China by Paul French, took the world by storm when it was published last year. With editions published by Penguin US, Penguin UK, Penguin Australia, Penguin China, and Penguin Canada, it was truly a global publishing event. Midnight in Peking is an absolutely riveting true crime story that has received critical acclaim around the globe. It has also been nominated for an Edgar award in the Best Fact Crime category. French, a historian and China expert, has opened the books on a seventy-five-year-old unsolved murder and offers a glimpse into the last days of Colonial Peking.

Peking, January 1937. In the frigid winter air, the ancient Fox Tower—rumored to be home to the seductive fox spirits who steal men’s souls—keeps silent watch. The morning after Russian Orthodox Christmas celebrations, the city awakens to a hangover—and a murder. The mutilated body of British schoolgirl Pamela Werner is found at the base of the Fox Tower, on the edge of the Badlands. A shiver of fear and shock ripples through Peking. With the Japanese already in Manchuria and encircling Peking, the city is on high alert.

Chinese detective Han and visiting British detective Dennis team up to solve the case, battling time and the meddling of their respective bureaucracies. Dennis, a Scotland Yard man, attempts to recreate Pamela’s last days by combing through her diary and questioning her friends. A puzzling picture emerges of a girl who was sometimes a studious schoolgirl and other times a girl on the cusp of womanhood.

Han and Dennis’s investigation pulls them deep into Peking’s seedy underworld of crime, drugs, and prostitution. As the weeks progress and they get no closer to finding the killer, they are pressured to close the case by their superiors, the press, and the public. Dennis returns to Tientsin and Han closes the official investigation. Unsatisfied, Pamela’s father, ETC Werner, takes up the search for justice. What he uncovers is even more devious that Han and Dennis had suspected. Though no justice is served, the remainder of Werner’s life is consumed with the investigation into his daughter’s murder.

Almost seventy-five years after the murder of Pamela Werner, Paul French finally gives the case the resolution it was denied at the time. In the tradition of the true crime classics White Mischief and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Midnight in Paris transforms a front page murder into an absorbing and emotional exposé, bringing the last days of old Peking to life.